crabtree

“Mario wants to hold that highlight in his hands, but reflections can't be held. A sadness overcomes him. How is it possible for someone to read about anatomy all afternoon, to put everything that he learns in perfect order, and then suddenly for him to get it into his head that he wants to hold a reflection?”
― Margarita Liberaki, Three Summers

“What kind of monsters deserved such treatment, such rage and contempt? Vampires, yes, but also the bastard sons, the unbaptized ones, the inhabitants of other regions, the sodomites and those careless souls who allowed a black cat to jump over their dead bodies. In short: anyone. Anyone could be considered a monster. And monsters were assassinated with impunity. Didn’t you know? Didn’t we all know? The grownups who hushed themselves to protect the children; the children who, without knowing how, discovered they were not safe from the darkness and death?”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“Now my sisters and I no longer lie around in the hay talking. We aren't all in the same place the way we were last year and other years. And when we happen to be together it's as if there is a new awkwardness, as if we had betrayed one another by doing our own thing.

Certainly some day the awkwardness will pass, though time will never undo the betrayal.”
― Margarita Liberaki, Three Summers

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History